How do you feel about Earth Day, both in Santa Cruz and throughout the USA? The first Earth Day was in 1970 and was organized by Wisconsin’s Senator Gaylord Nelson to be a massive public demonstration to restore the environment. Estimates are that 20 million people took to the streets in protest. They say that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded because of those first Earth Day demonstrations.
Imagine so many people demonstrating because of environmental degradation in the United States! While some things have improved since 1970, we are now facing the greatest threat to the planet ever due to greenhouse gases and climate change. Earth Day nowadays is tamer, perhaps too tame. What are we going to do to better celebrate Earth Day?
Earth Day Learning Back in 2023
The best things I find to do on Earth Day in the Monterey Bay area last year, in 2023, were about learning. My favorite educational attractions for Earth Day are being offered in conjunction with Earth Day Santa Cruz. Mainly, I suggest that you check out the free admission to the Museum of Art and History where the main feature is the Bay of Life exhibit. Chris Eckstrom’s and Frans Lanting’s Bay of Life project is very important- a way for more of the Monterey Bay’s people to learn how we live in an epically special place. The photos at the exhibition are more than memorable…they are inspirational, and the project aims to mobilize people, much as Earth Day did at its origin.
Earth Day Reading
For Earth Day every year, I highly recommend people read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. The book is full of wisdom about how to live better on this planet. If you are interested in what your find in Ishmael, take the next step and read Derrick Jensen’s Endgame. Both books will point you in the right direction in many ways. A lot of what Derrick Jensen has to say is pretty important.
Learning is Not Enough
Environmental education is only valuable if it helps nurture pro-environmental behavior.
Give or Take?
In Quinn’s Ishmael, we are asked to reflect on if we are taking too much or just what we need from Earth. I take that another step to ask what we are giving back to Earth. Very few of the events I find about Earth Day every year in the Monterey Bay area are about taking less, not giving back to Mother Earth. Some of the events are downright greenwashing or irrelevant. Ecological restoration is the main way I see that we can give back to Earth, but I can’t find a single opportunity to help with ecological restoration associated with Earth Day near Santa Cruz.
I know of five organizations in Santa Cruz that help people give back to Earth. The California Native Plant Society, through its habitat restoration projects. The Coastal Watershed Council through its River Health programs. The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History with its habitat restoration volunteer opportunities. Groundswell Coastal Ecology has The Most Regularly Available opportunities to help restore areas around Santa Cruz. One might consider committing to helping these efforts as a pledge on Earth Day and then following up at one of their next events. Last, Watsonville Wetlands Watch also (rarely) has opportunities to help restore areas in south county.
Don’t be Fooled: This and other Earth Day events aren’t necessarily good for Mother Nature
Greenwashing Earth Day
In 2023, I noticed one event that brought greenwashing to local Earth Day celebrations. Building new trails is not a pro-environmental behavior, especially when it comes to building those trails at Cotoni Coast Dairies. As I have mentioned in previous essays, that property has not experienced the kind of planning for trails that is necessary to conserve our extraordinary biodiversity, especially that land’s sensitive wildlife species and the species protected through its National Monument status. That hasn’t stopped the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz (aka Santa Cruz Mountain Trail Stewardship) from advertising an Earth Day event that focuses on habitat degradation. At their ‘Dig Day,’ volunteers will be unwittingly paving the way for unnecessarily wildlife disturbing activities. Earth Day volunteers will be helping folks rich enough to afford both a car and the gas to get to that park to bring their mountain bikes to have a ‘rad time’ on trails too narrow to be comfortable for bombing bikers and families going for a walk to use at the same time. To assure mountain bikers rule the trails, BLM has proposed rules that would make it illegal to step off of the narrow trails. It’s a pity that the Bureau of Land Management has had such a special relationship with this group, allowing them so much access to the closed park while turning away ecologists who would help better understand the plants and wildlife that need protection.
Illustration by DeCinzo
Outdoor Industry Lobbying Infects Earth Day
This Earth Day let’s renew our dedication to vigilance in protecting our public lands from well-funded special interest groups. In California as elsewhere, there are coalitions of businesses organizing to lobby for “increased access”(read wildlife habitat destruction). Their job is to “streamline regulations and policy affecting the active outdoor industry” (read stop public lands managers from protecting wildlife in favor of outdoor recreation). The clout of the Outdoor Industry Association is affecting politics, apparently trickling down right here on our North Coast.
Earth Day is Every Day
In closing, I hope you can sort through the Earth Day hype to find something meaningful to do. If you seek educational programs, may your experience lead in in the direction of actions that you can take to not only reduce your footprint on Earth but also to help improve wildlife conservation in and around the Monterey Bay. May we all think about that impactful, original Earth Day and how we might soon mobilize to push for the changes needed to avert the catastrophes of climate change. We are gathering together to make a difference, and our might will be felt in the near future.
-this post slightly edited from the original part of Bruce Bratton’s BrattonOnline.com weekly blog.
What happens when a member of the public raises a concern about ecological pathogens to conservation lands managers during a public testimony process? This is a story that unfolded not long ago on the North Coast of Santa Cruz County concerning BLM’s management planning for Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Recall Last Week’s Column
If you haven’t already read my column from last week, it would be best to give it a quick read to put this essay into context. In brief, I outlined the devastation caused by reckless human movement of invasive, non-native pathogens affecting native plants and wildlife. The process introducing and spreading such pathogens is ongoing, despite the dangers being common knowledge. At the end of the essay, I pointed to the root cause of this issue, human greed, and outlined the common knowledge about the solution: slowing global trade enough so that we can take the time to be more careful. What I didn’t outline is what we can do more locally to address already introduced pathogens that have yet to spread across our conservation lands.
What responsibilities do conservation lands managers have for the wildlife and plants that occur on the lands they oversee? I’m betting you can guess one of those managers’ responsibilities…but not to wildlife and plants. Public access is often a conservation lands manager’s ‘responsibility.’ Consider the term ‘conservation lands’ for a moment and know that public access comes at a cost to conservation. So, part of those managers’ responsibilities is mitigating and avoiding the impacts of public visitors on wildlife and plants. And, those public visitors bring with them a variety of pathogens that can have grave negative impacts. While planning for public access at Cotoni Coast Dairies, unknown BLM staff wrote many statements acknowledging the danger of proposed recreational use and the spread of pathogens.
BLM Staff List Public Access Pathogen Dangers
Unknown BLM staff wrote extensively in the management plan for Cotoni Coast Dairies about the dangers of recreational use increasing plant and wildlife pathogens. They noted that recreational users “increase introduction of pathogens” (Chapter 4, pp. 5 and 11), which “pose risks to sensitive species,” impact native wildlife, and are “anticipated to impact aquatic species including special status fish species” (Chapter 3, p. 22; Chapter 4, pp. 18, and 32). BLM staff also addressed introduced plant pathogens using sudden oak death as an example. They noted that recreational trail use has been documented as being a significant source of the spread of plant pathogens (Chapter 4, p. 6). In addition, BLM staff also specifically addressed the spread of pathogens to wildlife from domesticated animals, warning that bobcats, grey foxes, dusky footed woodrat, and badgers are all known from Cotoni Coast Dairies and could all be negatively impacted by such diseases (Chapter 4, p. 19). The BLM staff went on to note that domestic dogs carry ‘hundreds’ of pathogens that can be spread to wildlife, including rabies, canine distemper, and canine parvovirus (Chapter 4. p. 21). Finally, the anonymous BLM staff also noted the dangers of introduced amphibian pathogens, including chytrid that is a major concern for California red-legged frog conservation (Chapter 4, p. 30), noting that recreational users spread such diseases (Chapter 4, pp. 35 and 36).
In sum, the BLM staff who wrote the governing management plan for Cotoni Coast Dairies articulated many of the concerns about introduced pathogens affecting the biota of that high-value conservation property. But, how did that knowledge affect their management? Very, very little.
BLM’s Management Response to Environmental Pathogens
After that litany of concerns, one might expect BLM staff to write appropriate management responses. Here are the two responses:
In response to the danger of domestic animals spreading pathogens to wildlife, they state:
“Therefore, BLM will not authorize or condone free-ranging dogs, or any other free-ranging domesticated animals or pets to utilize C-CD. (Chapter 4, p. 21)”
In response to the danger of recreationists spreading pathogens into the freshwater systems, they state:
“Therefore, BLM will seek to educate members of the public on this topic whenever possible. Appropriate signage may aid in reducing the potential for this to happen at C-CD. (Chapter 4, p. 36)
Note that the BLM staff avoided producing management measures that address the majority of the impacts of pathogens spread through the recreational activities they propose. This is particularly troubling because the foundational principle governing management of Cotoni Coast Dairies is not providing recreation, it is conserving the ecology of the property. Instead of outlining management to avoid or mitigate the spread of the pathogens, BLM staff favor recreational uses that they document increasing pathogen risk.
Pride, Prejudice, Ignorance, Overwork, or Institutional Policy?
Given the perplexing approach to increasing the danger of recreationists spreading pathogens that endanger the plants and wildlife of Cotoni Coast Dairies, it is reasonable to ask: WHY? The answer to that question seems to be ‘we will never know.’ Let’s examine some of the potential explanations.
On my documentation of planning shortcomings, one BLM staff person passionately and confidently proclaimed that their team had completely and professionally addressed all comments raised during the public comment period on the management plan. It could be that they were proud of their work and it could be that they were proud of the work of the other staff in their agency. And, given the clear shortcomings of the responses to my concerns about pathogen spread, it also appears that they might be prejudiced about the professionality of their agency. It might be that they are ignorant of the many solutions and mitigations available to stem the spread of pathogens on conservation lands. Another possibility is that staff are so overburdened with a multitude of responsibilities that they are unable to adequately address their planning responsibilities. Or, it might be institutional policy to avoid committing to certain types of management measures, whether due to cost, ease, or interference with recreation or other management preferences of prejudiced staff within the institution.
But, again, we will likely never know the reasons for these oversights. It is likely that BLM staff writing such plans will remain anonymous, so we won’t be able to ask individuals. When I’ve asked staff to refer me to the individuals responsible for decisions so that I could ask them about their rationale, they’ve refused. When BLM suggests that they ‘welcome public input,’ or are ‘seeking public input,’ such as with their latest proposal for a parking lot at Cotoni Coast Dairies, you have to wonder if your time is being well spent providing that input, given the hypotheses presented here. All we can do meanwhile is investigate and hypothesize: is it pride, prejudice, ignorance, overwork, or institutional policy that will lead to recreationists spreading the pathogens that will kill the wildlife and plants at Cotoni Coast Dairies?
– this essay slightly modified from that which was presented by the esteemed Bruce Bratton at his laudable BrattonOnline.com weekly blog.
Santa Cruz County’s newest conservation land managers are supposed to conserve the wildlife prioritized by the State of California, but are failing to acknowledge their obligations, which means some of our area’s iconic wildlife species will disappear faster due to lack of Federal cooperation at Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Background
The Bureau of Land Management oversees management of Cotoni Coast Dairies, but it is following much-outdated wildlife conservation guidance. Land management agencies like the BLM are guided by policies and procedures that guarantee that they do a good job of managing wildlife. For instance, BLM has its 6840 Manual “Sensitive Species Management,” which notes:
“The objectives of the BLM special status species policy are:
A. To conserve and/or recover ESA-listed species and the ecosystems on which they depend so that ESA protections are no longer needed for these species.
B. To initiate proactive conservation measures that reduce or eliminate threats to Bureau sensitive species to minimize the likelihood of and need for listing of these species under the ESA.”
In other words, BLM recognizes that the agency should not be contributing to wildlife species becoming rarer and so receiving more regulatory protection, which would impact private landowners by restricting the uses of their property.
Mouritsen’s Duty, Neglected
To avoid that, BLM California’s State Director Karen Mouritsen is required to, “at least once every 5 years,” review and update the BLM-maintained list of sensitive species in coordination with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). It is unusual for such policy guidance to lay out a specific timeline, which adds clarity to expectations. The last time California BLM’s sensitive wildlife list was updated was in 2010, before Director Mouritsen’s tenure: 13 years ago! A lot has changed in those intervening years, and scientists have recognized that many more wildlife species are in need of protection by BLM.
Repercussions at Cotoni Coast Dairies
What happens when BLM’s sensitive wildlife species list isn’t updated? Let’s look at the Cotoni Coast Dairies example. BLM has already completed a Resource Management Plan that is meant to guide wildlife conservation on the property. Under the guidance and environmental review provided by the RMP, the agency is building miles of trails and parking lots, implementing a cattle grazing program, and allocating funding to other prioritized activities. BLM will soon embark on a Science Plan for the property. The RMP didn’t and the Science Plan will not consider conservation of wildlife species that do not appear on the BLM’s sensitive species list. And so, the following 10 rare wildlife species will receive no attention, pushing them further towards extinction: ferruginous hawk, grasshopper sparrow, Northern harrier, olive-sided flycatcher, American badger, San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat, Western pond turtle, California red-legged frog, American peregrine falcon, and short-eared owl.
A Deeper Dive – Grasshopper Sparrow
Let’s consider one of those species with a little more detail, the grasshopper sparrow. If this species is nesting in an area, under California law they are protected and our state wildlife agency, CDFW, has been charged with their conservation. According to BLM guidance, Director Mouritsen is 13 years overdue in updating the agency’s sensitive wildlife list for California to include this species. As their name suggests, grasshopper sparrows are grassland-dependent organisms. There is an abundance of nesting grasshopper sparrows at Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Without active management such as with carefully planned livestock grazing or fire, all of the grasslands at Cotoni Coast Dairies will disappear, being invaded first by brush and then by trees. This is already happening with extensive French broom and coyote brush invasion.
Already, BLM has planned its livestock grazing and recreational trail uses without consideration of preferred habitat for nesting grasshopper sparrows. Livestock grazing could be taking place to the detriment of the species, already. The construction of recreational trails and parking lots may have already destroyed important nesting habitat. When recreational visitors start using those facilities, it may occur before BLM has a baseline study of the density and location of nesting grasshopper sparrows. So, the agency will be unable to understand how land uses are impacting the species and so will be unable in an informed way to adjust its recreational or livestock management to better conserve the species.
It may well be that BLM’s management of Cotoni Coast Dairies will further reduce nesting populations of grasshopper sparrow, pushing the species closer to the point where they will need to be listed as threatened or endangered. When that occurs, private landowners whose land supports nesting grasshopper sparrows will see increased regulation and oversight by the State and/or Federal government. Their property values will be reduced and their ability to develop homes, farms, or other uses will be diminished.
An Alternative
On the other hand, if the California BLM State Director Mouritsen were to meet her regulatory obligation and update the BLM State Sensitive Wildlife Species List in the near future, a bunch of good would result. First, Cotoni Coast Dairies’ Science Plan could provide guidance for conserving those species. Second, because BLM funding is tied to the number of sensitive species on each property, Cotoni Coast Dairies would be better situated for increased conservation funding. If the Science Plan succeeded in moving forward the conservation of sensitive species like the grasshopper sparrow, BLM’s leadership on these issues could help many other land managers do the right thing for species, contributing to the potentiality of ‘delisting’ species, reducing the potential for increased regulatory burden and loss of private property values.
Do Your Part
I’ve said it before in this column, but I’ll say it again. NOW is the time to write Director Mouritsen to urge her to do her job. She hasn’t replied to any of the numerous letters she’s already received, so evidently she needs more pressure to take this seriously. Here’s some language to send to her via her email kmourits@blm.gov Please let me know (or cc me) if you send something.
Dear Director Mouritsen,
I care about wildlife and plant conservation on BLM’s Cotoni Coast Dairies property in Santa Cruz County. I write to urge you to help by adding sensitive species found on that property to the State BLM’s sensitive species lists. Only if those species are on the State’s lists will local administrators consider impacts of their management on those species in their analyses and planning for the property. So, I ask that you please:
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive wildlife list in collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as mandated by the BLM’s 6840 Special Status Species Manual.
This list was last updated in 2010, but you are required to update it at least every 5 years.
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive plant list to include the State ranked 1B plant species documented at Cotoni Coast Dairies, as mandated by the 6840 Manual.
I would appreciate a reply to this email with details about how you intend to address these issues.
Signed, xx (you!)
-this post originally appeared as part of Bruce Bratton’s amazing weekly blog at BrattonOnline.com You an sign up and receive it automatic-like if you visit this site. You will be rewarded by getting smart commentary and news that is very relevant to life in general and life on the Monterey Bay specifically.
The California division of the Bureau of Land Management suggests that it is concerned about rare species, but what evidence is there for those of us considering their management of Cotoni Coast Dairies? It is crucial that public land managers take care of rare wildlife and plants – doesn’t it seem like public lands are the right place for species conservation? Let’s consider what we’ve seen…
Background
The BLM has some great policies to guide its management of rare species. It has a guidance manual, Manual 6840 “Special Status Species Management,” that says that BLM will manage not only for species on the USA’s list of threatened and endangered species, but also for species that are candidates for listing as well as those which State wildlife agencies consider priorities for conservation. The manual directs each BLM State office to keep a list of State Sensitive Species (both wildlife and plants) and to update those lists every 5 years in collaboration with State wildlife agencies.
BLM California has published the following lists of sensitive plants and wildlife.
California BLM’s Sensitive Species: Problems
Although BLM’s policies are good, somehow their implementation at Cotoni Coast Dairies, designated as one of 5 onshore units of California’s Coastal National Monument, has been faulty. For instance, plant species listed by the State as rare (Rank 1B) are automatically considered sensitive according to BLM policy, but the BLM California sensitive plant list is missing three of the California rare plant Rank 1B species that have been documented at Cotoni Coast Dairies: Choris’ popcornflower, Santa Cruz manzanita, and Monterey pine. In addition, although BLM’s State Sensitive Plant List has Point Reyes Horkelia, it is not noted as occurring under the management of the Central Coast Field Office, which oversees Cotoni Coast Dairies. Moreover, the last time BLM’s sensitive wildlife list was updated was 2009; it is missing many species recognized by California Department of Fish and Wildlife as rare, including some that occur at Cotoni Coast Dairies. Here are the Cotoni Coast Dairies’ wildlife species that would have been included on BLM’s sensitive wildlife list if the BLM California State Director Karen Mouritsen were following her mandated actions under Manual 6840:
Common name
Latin name
Rarity Status
Grasshopper sparrow
Ammodramus savannarum
CA Species of Special Concern (nesting)
Northern harrier
Circus cyaneus
CA Species of Special Concern (nesting)
Olive-sided flycatcher
Contopus cooperi
CA Species of Special Concern (nesting)
American badger
Taxidea taxus
CA Species of Special Concern
San Francisco dusky-footed woodrat
Neotoma fuscipesannectens
CA Species of Special Concern
BLM Central Coast Field Office: Problems
The staff at BLM’s Central Coast Field Office have described themselves as being ‘conservationists.’ If this is so, then they are prevented from carrying out their self-professed ideology by someone higher up in BLM, perhaps at the State BLM level under Director Mouritsen’s oversight. In 2021, Michael Powers is listed as the author of the “Biological Monitoring Plan, Cotoni-Coast Dairies unit of the California Coastal National Monument, Updated December 2021.” It is odd that there is a monitoring plan in absence of the science plan mandated by the 6220 Manual, which provides policy for managing units of National Monuments under BLM’s stewardship. This oddness continues when one more closely peruses Mr. Powers’ monitoring plan.
Section V of the monitoring plan is titled “Special Status Species,” but the section fails to mention the majority of wildlife and plants on California BLM’s sensitive species lists. The only species listed in this section are the California red-legged frog, steelhead trout, and coho salmon – these noted as ‘Federally Listed’ at the top of that section. The section of the monitoring plan fails to list the monarch butterfly, which was published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as a candidate for listing as endangered a year before the monitoring plan, in 2020. According to BLM policy in the 6840 manual, federally published candidate species are to be considered sensitive species with such monitoring plans.
BLM Natural Resource Impacts
Some would suggest that plans are just plans and lists are just lists, but how do these things really matter? Someone in one of the California BLM offices ordered candidate species monarch butterfly habitat to be destroyed at Cotoni Coast Dairies (one day, we’ll know who!). Destroying that habitat makes it more difficult to restore healthy populations of monarch butterflies on Planet Earth. The increasing rarity of monarch butterflies that BLM has created places more burden on other landowners, both public and private to help monarchs not become extinct.
More broadly, someone evidently told BLM’s Mr. Powers not to consider the entirety of California State BLM-listed sensitive species in the monitoring and, presumably, management of Cotoni Coast Dairies. Since BLM State or local officials have not asked for help with budget, there must be some other issue, but political issues don’t seem logical. BLM’s policy states the following reason for analyzing, monitoring, and planning for the conservation of sensitive species: “to promote their conservation and reduce the likelihood and need for future listing under the ESA.” The majority of Americans on either side of the political divide support wildlife conservation. It is in everyone’s interest for species not to qualify for listing under the Endangered Species Act.
Without concerted collaborative effort, it is likely that at least one of the sensitive plants or animals at Cotoni Coast Dairies will face listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the next 30 years. The Point Reyes Horkelia is probably the most likely species, but the Monarch butterfly is also quite likely. The BLM has no plans to monitor those species, so the agency won’t know if its management of Cotoni Coast Dairies is helping or hurting those species.
What You Can Do
Would you please help? Please write State Director Mouritsen and ask her to protect sensitive species at Cotoni Coast Dairies as well as throughout California. You might mention that she should:
Order the Central Coast Field Office to consider BLM California’s sensitive plants and wildlife at Cotoni Coast Dairies as required by BLM’s 6840 Special Status Species Manual.
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive wildlife list in collaboration with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as mandated by the BLM’s 6840 Special Status Species Manual.
Publish an updated State BLM sensitive plant list to include the State ranked 1B plant species documented at Cotoni Coast Dairies, as mandated by the 6840 Manual.
Respect those who care about natural resource protection as much as she respects those clamoring for access for mountain bikes at Cotoni Coast Dairies.
Publish a Science Plan for Cotoni Coast Dairies as required by BLM’s 6220 National Monuments, National Conservation Areas, and Similar Designations (Public) Manual
That could be a short email note….it would be fast to write! It could even be a cut-and-paste of the those bullets. What we need is numbers of notes to show the Director that there are lots of people who care. Here’s her email address: kmourits@blm.gov It would be great if you could cc me, so I have a record of the communications: coastalprairie@aol.com
-this article originally published in Bruce Bratton’s impactful weekly blog BrattonOnline.com
I invite you to immerse yourself for a few moments into my dream of the future of Santa Cruz’ North Coast. How will Cotoni Coast Dairies fare in the future, for instance in 2064? During the past year, many things have aligned to allow my dream to be much closer to reality.
Cotoni Coast Dairies’ new manager, Zacchary Ormsby is the first with the skill, knowledge and respect to manage the property according to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) protocol for lands with National Monument and National Conservation Lands status. Zacchary is joined by a freshly hired California Coastal Monument manager, another conservation-oriented biologist, Leisyka Parrot. Congressman Jimmy Pannetta, a skilled veteran of addressing impacts in over-loved and under-stewarded wildlands of Big Sur, has been newly elected to represent Cotoni Coast Dairies’ geography. Jimmy is dedicated to helping address North Coast tourist visitation issues with his important federal government leverage. And Justin Cummings with his doctorate in multi-disciplinary environmental problem solving is newly both the County Supervisor AND the Coastal Commissioner overseeing the park. Meanwhile, many very smart coalitions are poised to work together to assure that Cotoni Coast Dairies is a park for all, well stewarded for wildlife, forever.
Looking Forward
It is 2064, the 50th anniversary of Cotoni Coast Dairies becoming public land, and there are national celebrations of this unexpectedly exemplary project. The New York Times has a full color Sunday edition article featuring the park’s success. Cotoni Coast Dairies has become a global destination for accessible, multi-cultural nature tourism. Hundreds of thousands of visitors have enjoyed immersive educational experiences that are the gold standard being copies at other parks around the world. Programs at the park have changed lives of thousands of underrepresented schoolchildren from throughout the Bay Area. Tourists of many nationalities flock to Santa Cruz with this destination in mind. The park’s managers have worked closely with scientists and conservationists, succeeding in restoring the property’s teeming wildlife populations. Visitation is so well managed that many different experiences are available, no matter what ethnicity or language and no matter the financial means. Using cutting edge technology, parks administrators provide the vast array of experiences that visitors report wanting and have developed software to continuously adapt available park experiences accordingly. BLM has received recognition for their sound management through strong public as well as private funding and through the added capacity of dedicated partner organizations and volunteers.
Badgers, Burrowing Owls, and Tule Elk, Oh My!
Early on, BLM partnered with local scientists, State and Federal wildlife agencies, and conservation groups with what turned out to be highly successful reintroduction programs for American badger, western burrowing owl, beaver, and tule elk. Volunteers working with conservation groups adapted prior regional wildlife connectivity successes to create Western North America’s first badger preserve by reintroducing ground squirrels, installing drift fences to underpasses along roads to reduce badger fatalities, and creating landscape-scale habitat corridors, and badger populations recovered. Because badgers prefer sandy soils for denning, Cotoni Coast Dairies managers designed large recreation-free buffers around the best denning sites; at first, those buffers were insufficient, but monitoring refined buffer design, and the badgers responded positively with their first young born in 2040. The badger and ground squirrel burrows created habitat that made it possible to later reintroduce burrowing owls which have established several breeding colonies in the huge swaths of restored coastal prairies. These wildlife species have become an important focus for visitation.
Restored Coastal Prairie
Besides reintroduction of these keystone grassland wildlife species, BLM managers embarked on two other processes that turned out to be critical to the restoration of some of California’s last remaining coastal prairies. First, the entire property, including its prairies, became actively cared for by the descendants of the indigenous people who have tended the landscape for thousands of years. The importance of indigenous stewardship was an insight from the outset, including in the name of the property beginning with the tribal name of the first inhabitants, ‘Cotoni.’ In the process of recognizing and revitalizing their culture, native people have directed hundreds of programs attracting thousands of volunteers, school children, and others to collaborate in the large-scale restoration of the land. They reintroduced fire management and tended wildflowers and grasses, carefully relearning the best ways to nurture them to health. The native peoples have revived their internationally renowned basketry, tending plants throughout the park for materials.
At the same time, BLM managers have used cutting-edge, science-based livestock grazing management to restore coastal prairie health. They have collaborated with many other coastal prairie managers, from Humboldt to Santa Barbara, to manage cattle alongside tule elk herds, moving the animals through a matrix of patches of grasslands managed with prescribed fire and reseeding. The prairies draw visitors each spring to view stunning spring wildflower displays unrivaled in the region.
Vibrant Lagoons and Beaches
The 2050s were a decade of sea level rise adaptation made possible by the strong North Coast public lands managers partnership facilitated for decades by Santa Cruz City Parks. The first beach and Highway 1 realignment to be redesigned was at Scott Creek Beach, back in the 2030’s. Then, there were successes in restoring Lidell Creek/Bonny Doon Beach and Laguna Creek/Laguna Beach, and then the coalitions managed to redesign all the other North Coast Beaches and highway crossings. Economic development, transportation and conservation interests all converged, and every beach has moved inland of Highway 1. Multi-use bridges accommodate public transport, pedestrian, and bicycle use as well as interpretive and viewing areas which draw the highest numbers of visitors.
The redesigned bridges allowed reintroduction of beavers, which in turn restored fish habitat. Coho salmon and steelhead have been reproducing in all the newly restored streams. After 40 years, BLM wildlife biologists have succeeded in restoring California red-legged frog populations to every beaver pond and lagoon on the North Coast; this is the last place they can be reliably found, the last viable population remaining on Earth. While beachgoing recreation is no longer possible on most North Coast Beaches, the small slivers of sand now support snowy plover nests alongside elephant seal nurseries, drawing wildlife-oriented tourists to high tech, wildlife sensitive viewing opportunities.
Visitor Highlights
Cotoni Coast Dairies has become known for its approachability and accessibility. Visitors are greeted by guides who can communicate in 14 languages; interpretive information on interactive signs is available in an additional 30 languages. Guides are provided state of the art, sustainably constructed family homes attached to visitor interpretation outposts spread throughout the property, allowing 24-7 oversight.
Visitor experiences at Cotoni Coast Dairies vary with time in response to ongoing surveys of existing and potential users. While it has become necessary to limit use, a universally available reservation system assures fair distribution of tickets. Free transportation into the park is available from nearby public transit hubs. The reservation system allows park managers to adjust amount and types of use, including segregating users within the park, to accommodate visitor expectations and reduce use conflict. Families feel safe walking small children or elderly family members on tranquil trails while thrill seeking bicycle riders enjoy uncrowded downhill forays without worrying about others’ safety. If you don’t mind more crowded conditions, you won’t be surprised by what you experience. But, if you want more solitude or better wildlife viewing opportunities, parks managers have specific days, trails and destinations just for you.
One of the most popular reservation requests is for guided nighttime wildlife viewing. For this opportunity, small groups are guided into one of 10 remote viewing locations designed to minimize wildlife impacts while maximizing the opportunity to view nighttime wildlife using the latest night vision technology. Visitors enjoy these immersive experiences, with interpretation and storytelling by expert volunteer naturalists.
Digital communication has allowed active feedback about visitors’ experiences to parks managers, and data feeds into the network of universities participating in the studies and assisting with adaptive management. Management response to real time social carrying capacity analysis has become second nature to Cotoni Coast Dairies users and the vastly superior visitor use experience has resulted in a high demand for updating other park system management protocol.
Realizing the Dream
What I describe above is truly attainable if we want it bad enough and are willing to act. The key element of success is public will which is necessary to raise our capacity to succeed. We’ll need leadership, volunteers, capital, technology, and kindness. And, we need to have a common vision: I hope I began that by communicating something we can work together to hone and then aspire to. If you like this vision, let BLM, Jimmy Panetta, and Justin Cummings know by clicking those links and writing a short note referencing this essay.
-this post originally posted via Bruce Bratton on his vastly illuminating weekly blog at BrattonOnline.com: subscribe now and SAVE!
Someone new on the scene recently asked me to explain the history of what went wrong at Cotoni Coast Dairies. After many, many years, the property still isn’t being managed for wildlife or public safety, and it still isn’t open to the public. As a prelude to this, I urge readers to read my essay on how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) came to manage the property in the first place…a curious story, indeed. This essay compliments that prior essay with more details, especially since BLM took over managing the property. Soon, I’ll be writing the third in this series with suggestions about what is needed to improve this unfortunate situation.
Years of On the Ground Nothing, or Worse
Since its purchase for conservation, Cotoni Coast Dairies has a history of very little stewardship and management. Trust for Public Land purchased the property in 1998 and held it until 2014. During that time, managers working for the Trust for Public Land did almost nothing to maintain the property. Occasionally, someone would show up to clear some anticipated future trail. For instance, TPL contractors extensively cleared riparian vegetation along Liddell Creek, chainsawing decades-old willow trees that shaded endangered fish habitat and provided cover for the endangered California red-legged frog. They argued that the clearance was along an ‘existing road,’ and they started putting this trail on early maps as a favored future public access point. (The trail later appeared on BLM’s maps, but federal wildlife protection agency personnel demanded otherwise, so the trail disappeared from plans.) Otherwise, TPL let fences, gates, and culverts rust away, roads and trails erode, weeds spread, and fuels build up creating hazardous conditions for future wildfires.
Eight years ago, BLM took over management of Cotoni Coast Dairies, and those same patterns largely continued. Early on, BLM staff constructed a new trail, carving through nests of state-listed sensitive wildlife without required State consultation. Like TPL, BLM staff have either overlooked erosion issues along roads or graded long abandoned ‘existing roads’ (aka ‘future trails’) with uncannily similar detrimental impacts to rare fish and amphibians. Meanwhile, terrible weeds and immense wildfire risks continued to spread across the property. The reason BLM staff have given for such poor stewardship: ‘we don’t have an approved plan.’ That changed, but management hasn’t…except for one new stretch of cattle fence and subset of future trails being created mainly by volunteers. The trails and fence came before any work on invasive species or wildfire mitigation, so we sadly sense BLM staff priorities have been directed away from conservation towards recreational access.
Decades of Funky Planning and Community Engagement
Staff from both TPL and BLM have sporadically spent a bit of time working on poor planning processes or participating in largely perfunctory public meetings about property management at Cotoni Coast Dairies. In the year 2000, TPL convened and facilitated a Community Advisory Group (CAG) to advise on guidelines meant to be used by future managers. A few of us on the CAG were asked to provide feedback about the biological portion of those guidelines, but we were unable to improve the largely cursory and incomplete biological assessments used to guide future property management. It is unclear if those guidelines have ever been used by BLM, or if TPL even cares.
BLM has done little to inventory the property, so it has very poor information with which to plan its management. Like TPL, BLM staff have shunned offers to improve biological survey data and so, as with the TPL plans, BLM’s plans have overlooked species and ecosystems that are easily identified and/or previously catalogued by reputable sources. This alienates the conservation community including the wealth of well-trained scientists that this region enjoys.
Instead of the long series of TPL’s CAG meetings, BLM staff showed up for a single community-engagement-style meeting convened and facilitated by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. That meeting surprisingly and very oddly focused on weighing pros and cons of parking lot locations, but it was never clear why public input was sought or what became of it afterwards. In the midst of this, an outside funder parachuted in hundreds of thousands of dollars so that several local organizations could mount a seemingly ‘grassroots’ Monument Campaign.
Monument Ahoy
In 2015, The Sempervirens Fund led the “Monument Campaign,” a fast-paced, highly scripted, well-funded effort to organize rallies and letter writing to show public support for National Monument designation of Cotoni Coast Dairies. In what is increasingly common “fake news,” the bulk of the Monument Campaign messaging was about opening the property for public use, while in fact Monument designation is more about improving conservation of the property…which would typically increase limitations on public access. This nonsense was compounded by campaign organizers’ refusal to address how designation would increase deed restriction protections already in place from TPL. Furthermore, organizers dismissed concerns about managing the anticipated influx of visitors drawn to something called a National Monument. How important the Monument Campaign was in Obama’s designation is unclear, but the divisions in the community were deep and lasting. Organizers were successful in coalescing well-meaning but very poorly informed people whose nonsensical byline was “Monument designation means my family will be able to visit!” On the other hand, there was a surprisingly politically diverse coalition equipped with well-informed questions and concerns that were never addressed. After that local experience, it is difficult for me to believe that any political faction is immune from using scripted ‘truthiness,’ hype, or even lies when they feel those tools necessary in attracting popular support for secret agendas. Unsurprisingly, leaders of the ephemeral Monument Campaign movement have since disappeared from involvement, leaving the aftermath for the real, long-term grassroots organizations to deal with, and we have yet to experience any conservation benefit of Monument designation.
Pop Up Trail Plans, Abandoned
As the Monument Campaign launched in 2015, BLM issued a proposal for the property’s first public access trail, aka the “Laguna Trail,” in an expedited environmental review process that showed our community how poorly equipped BLM staff were to adequately plan for the property. BLM staff relied on old, insufficient biological inventories for their analysis, failed to survey for endangered species, and did not include any analysis of how the trail would address social equity concerns in providing for visitor use. BLM staff did not respond to the many concerns raised by the public but instead completed their pro-forma circulation and approval of planning documents and rapidly deployed machinery and workers to clear the trail. Trail construction proceeded without conforming to even the nominal environmental guidelines outlined in BLM’s planning documents. The hastily constructed trail cut through state-protected wildlife habitat, degraded historical artifacts, and came very close to a native village site which BLM failed to plan for protecting. In addition, if the project had proceeded, BLM would have opened a trail beginning at Laguna Creek Road and Highway 1 without any new parking, litter, or bathroom facilities, without sufficient staffing for enforcement or interpretation, and without a recreational plan for the property as a whole to analyze how to best protect wildlife while providing public access. This pop up trail was BLM’s way of introducing themselves to the land and to our community.
Introductions to BLM Planning Procedures
As the first federal land manager in the County, it was BLM staff who introduced our community to the federal government’s environmental planning process. This introduction was surprising in many ways. We had been accustomed to public lands managers paying careful attention to protecting “environmentally sensitive habitat areas” (ESHA) according to Coastal Commission rules. Not so with this property – BLM staff didn’t even provide the public maps of those regulated habitat areas in any of their planning documents! With the promise of National Monument protections, we were hopeful that BLM staff would follow the required and highly regimented process outlined in BLM’s policy “Manual 6220,” which provides staff with guidelines on how to manage national monuments. Again, not so! In fact, BLM staff have not used the 6220 manual and have neglected any public acknowledgement of the manual, as if they do not intend to use it, at all. Moreover, BLM staff have never specifically acknowledged the many species and ecosystems protected through the monument designation process. Monument management protocol seems irrelevant to BLM staff, who are apparently bent on expediting the public access so vocally anticipated by the Monument Campaign (coincidence?).
The job ain’t finished until the paperwork is done! Cartoon compliments of DeCinzo, Caption by Grey Hayes
Expediting Public Access
BLM staff have chosen expediency over thoroughness in each of their property planning exercises. For their most recent property-wide plan, instead of data-based predictions of visitor use, BLM staff chose a largely arbitrary low-ball figure of 250,000 anticipated visitors/year for the property. Instead of the logical in-depth alternatives analysis of a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), BLM staff have chosen expedited Environmental Analysis (EA) processes, complete with incredible conclusions of ‘Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI),’ despite significant contrary expert testimony that has gone unaddressed and unacknowledged. As we learned for the first time about its ‘federal consistency process,’ the Coastal Commission recently mandated that BLM use a phased approach to opening the property to public use. The Coastal Commission required that only if/when the BLM proved it could adequately manage public use could it open the full range of parking lots and trails; that proof requires monitoring and such monitoring would normally require a baseline inventory of sensitive natural resources, but we have yet to see that happen…we don’t even know the language to which the BLM and the Coastal Commission have agreed.
Nipping at the Community
My personal interactions with BLM staff have historically been less than pleasant, perhaps because those staff members are unused to much public engagement. My experience of poor interactions with BLM staff isn’t isolated. Someone suggested that this might be partly because those staff feel ‘rocked back on their heels’ because of criticism of their work, which is odd because our comments have been professional, polite, and part of what BLM should expect as public lands planning processes. A BLM staffer told me long ago that their colleagues were in for a surprise as they encountered the very actively involved communities of Santa Cruz County’s North Coast. Previously, most BLM staff working at Cotoni Coast Dairies had worked very much out of the public eye, in remote parts of California with little/no public oversight.
While we can’t ascertain why BLM staff have avoided offers for assistance, their subterfuge is as enlightening as it has been damaging. My compassion about staff feeling rocked back on their heels is limited because BLM staff have sought to discredit my work and harm my reputation, even approaching employers with false information to negatively affect my job while also giving ultimatums to conservation networks to preclude my participation. During one encounter at a public meeting, a BLM staff person told me that they would never collaborate with me or the groups with whom I worked because I was “against any public access at Cotoni Coast Dairies.” That was an incorrect statement about my position that I had likewise been hearing from a particularly activist, radical group of mountain bikers. As this BLM staff person echoed that quote, it was possible to better understand communication channels and allegiances.
My earliest interactions with BLM staff at Cotoni Coast Dairies were when I proposed assistance for biological monitoring. I and a few other biologists offered BLM free assistance with biological surveys to improve their understanding of the property. After that proposal, over a very long time, a BLM staff person strung us along through an incorrect informal process without ever encouraging us or acknowledging the potential value of such work. There was a chain of calls and emails that each ended with something like ‘well, maybe….’ By the time we subsequently discovered the correct application process and applied in that way, leadership had changed and the application was then officially refused.
Cumulative Impacts: Traffic, Trauma, Toilets and Trash (the 4 T’s)
It is important to view BLM’s problems in the context of issues related to visitor access on conservation lands throughout Santa Cruz County. As with all of the other public lands managers, BLM has been planning for visitor use and conservation in a vacuum, as if the surrounding lands don’t exist: this is a deeply flawed perspective. Much of the land from Santa Cruz City to the County line is heavily used by recreational visitors. Most weekends, parking lots overflow with cars and parked cars dangerously line the highway. There are too few trash cans and toilets to serve those visitors. Police and emergency responders are stretched to respond to the many accidents such visitation is bound to create.
County Parks, State Parks, the City of Santa Cruz, the Rail Trail, and BLM each have their own properties to manage and the same 4 T’s issues to address, but they aren’t doing it collaboratively. It is clear that none of those agencies has the resources to address those issues and so those issues are borne by our community. Visitors have come to expect trashy beaches. Emergency responders have come to expect exhaustion and insufficient support. Visitors with elderly family members or small children are avoiding parks due to dangerous or disgusting conditions. As each agency plans in isolation to provide for the maximum number of visitors, parks managers are dooming wildlife and visitor experience – the carrying capacity for the entire North Coast will be surpassed. It is no wonder that our community does not trust BLM to be able to manage their land and the visitors that they plan on attracting. BLM entered an arena of mistrust and fueled the fire with their own mistakes.
Who is Responsible?
Those of you who know me well know I don’t like the passive tense: I like clearly stating the subjects of verbs…who (specifically) is responsible for doing what (specifically). And yet, agencies like BLM are opaque…staff even refuse to specify who is specifically responsible for anything you might witness happening. But, placing the entire blame of the tragedy of Cotoni Coast Dairies on current BLM staff is unfair. Local, state and federal elected officials also bear some responsibility; good intel is that some of them have even winked behind closed doors in Washington DC, saying that local concerns needn’t be addressed. But again, placing a large amount of blame on elected officials also doesn’t seem fair: after all, they should be swayed by popular opinion (or at least election).
We saw how enough funding swayed popular opinion with the Monument Campaign, right? Apparently, no funders have been inspired to sway popular opinion in favor of wildlife protection on conservation lands in this particularly biodiverse region. Even if they did, there is a dearth of organizations who would lead that campaign. And so, in regard to the tragedies unfolding at Cotoni Coast Dairies and across Santa Cruz County’s North Coast, we must bear the brunt of blame within our community, which has long lacked leadership, energy, and focus on environmental conservation. For more on that, read my essay “Democracy and the Environment.” And, stay tuned for the third in this series of essays where I will outline steps forward out of this unfortunate predicament.
-this article adapted and updated from what appeared in late March at Bruce Bratton’s blog BrattonOnline.com
Grey Hayes 